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The new Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Heathrow Terminal 2 and T3 is open

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The new Hilton Garden Inn, which is the first hotel directly connected to Terminals 2 and 3 at Heathrow Airport, opened last night.

It was touch and go, apparently.

Bookings for the previous four days had been cancelled at short notice, and guests who checked in yesterday afternoon were told that they would need to leave again if a certain permit was not received by the evening (it was).

I’ve never been too sure what a Hilton Garden Inn is meant to be, as opposed to a standard Hilton or DoubleTree.  They price below a Hilton and I can see weekend nights at this hotel as low as £80 during August, which is decent value for a hotel which links to the terminals.

The owner is Arora Group, which also owns the Sofitel at Terminal 5 and the new Crowne Plaza / Holiday Inn Express attached to Terminal 4 which I rate highly (my Crowne Plaza Terminal 4 review is here, my Holiday Inn Express Terminal 4 review is here).

The Hilton Garden Inn website is here if you want to find out more.


How to earn Hilton Honors points and status from UK credit cards

How to earn Hilton Honors points and status from UK credit cards (April 2025)

There are various ways of earning Hilton Honors points from UK credit and debit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

There are two dedicated Hilton Honors debit cards. These are especially attractive when spending abroad due to the 0% or 0.5% FX fee, depending on card.

You also receive FREE Hilton Honors status for as long as you hold the debit cards – Gold status with the Plus card and Silver status with the basic card. This is a great reason to apply even if you rarely use it.

We reviewed the Hilton Honors Plus Debit Card here and the Hilton Honors Debit Card here.

You can apply for either card here.

NEW: Hilton Honors Plus Debit

10,000 bonus points, Hilton Gold status and NO FX fees Read our full review

NEW: Hilton Honors Debit

2,500 bonus points, Hilton Silver status and 0.5% FX fees Read our full review

There is another way of getting Hilton Honors status, and earning Hilton Honors points, from a payment card.

Holders of The Platinum Card from American Express receive FREE Hilton Honors Gold status for as long as they hold the card.  It also comes with Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Radisson Rewards Premium and MeliaRewards Gold status.

We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here and you can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

You can also earn Hilton Honors points indirectly with:

and for small business owners:

The conversion rate from American Express to Hilton Honors points is 1:2.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which can be used to earn Hilton Honors points.

Comments (173)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Michael says:

    Any harm in referring your parents to pick up a referral bonus? And then they just cancel straight away.

    • Rob says:

      No. But, at the same time, why cancel? Why not take the card, spend what is required to earn the sign-up bonus and then use the points yourself? (Bonvoy and Hilton points could go to you via their account, or you could put them into an Avios HHA with you).

  • Doreen says:

    Wasn’t 5th August a possible start date for the Pilots’ strike ?

  • Vasco says:

    Think a Garden Inn is meant to be in the Holiday Inn segment, above Hampton and below Full Service Hilton and Double Tree.

    Pretty good in the States where you can cooked breakfast as a Gold, rather than just the buffet.

    • Anna says:

      The 2 HGIs I’ve stayed in were much nicer than any HI I’ve been to, and also much better than some of the distinctly shabby Hiltons I’ve stayed in.

      • Leo says:

        Well that’s really the thing about “Hiltons” – can’t guarantee what they will be like.

    • Lady London says:

      isnt HGI a bit above Doubletree? gym, etc.
      Doubletree only has cookies (an awful lot of which seem to be being consumed by reception staff)

  • Harvey says:

    OT
    Virgin redemption- What is the cancellation policy? Same as Avios. Full points refund? Is there a charge? TY

    • Neil Donoghue says:

      Full points refunded and taxes refunded minus a fee. I believe the fee is £40 / £50 but 100% confident you get the points back

      • Prins Polo says:

        and the best thing is you can cancel a VS redemption by sending a text message from your phone if needed

      • lev441 says:

        It’s £30 cancellation fee but all points back as long as you do it before 24 hours prior to the flight

        • SG says:

          I believe it is 72 hours!

          • Lev441 says:

            Says that on the app but it’s not correct – it’s 24 hours – cancelled a flight last month with 24.5 hours to go and all was returned except the cancellation fee

  • Craig says:

    OT: First statement generated following Green-Plat upgrade with the £450 fee charged. I waited until at least one Green statement had previously generated, in essence this has cost me £5 extra (£60/12 Green Fee) for 25000MR points. Not as good as a sign up bonus but not too bad.

    • Grant says:

      Where are you getting the extra 5k points from? I thought Green > Plat via the magic link was 20K

    • MarkH says:

      Same here. Was worth a try though.

      Amex seem to have sorted their IT for these upgrades (unfortunately). I just upgraded my wife’s and on her MR account there is a counter for £4k spend to get 20k bonus whereas there never used to be when doing gold to plat.

  • Ammar says:

    OT – RE 241 Redemtpions
    I have business class flights booked out to Male but was not able to get the same on the way back, so trying to be creative. Could I use my 241 voucher to use my already booked flights out to MLE but come back from DOH-LHR instead? Would that work ?

    • Neil Donoghue says:

      241 can only be used on BA metal! As you have the flights out, consider looking at a flight to somewhere that BA fly and then go home from there. Sadly with Male your options are very very poor. BA don’t fly to Sri Lanka so the next option would be India and then don’t forget the rule, the distance cannot be great that either flight

      • meta says:

        But you can fly DOH-LON and book a separate flight MLE-DOH. Open jaws are permitted on 241 vouchers as long as the sector in between is less than the distance then the outbound or inbound. So in this case MLE-DOH is I believe less than LON-MLE and DOH-LON. You can check on GC Map if not sure.

    • SimonW says:

      Search for BA flights back from Bangalore….. its 2 hours from Male. We did that when we went to the Maldives

      • yorkieflyer says:

        but don’t forget you will need an indian visa transit(paper) or visitor(electronic) as you can’t rely on through checking baggage

        • SimonW says:

          aaah that’s a great point. We did a week first in India, so we had visas arranged by the travel agent.

    • Anna says:

      Surely you can fly from Male to Dubai? DBX-LHR usually has decent availability.

      • Anna says:

        Emirates fly this route. It’s only a 4 hour flight so doable in economy.

    • BJ says:

      Fly MLE-BKK with Air Asia, get your return flight from BKK.

  • nick says:

    Gatwick South flight this sunday at 3pm.
    airport expected to be busy? re bag drop queues, security and accessing the PP lounge?

    • Polly says:

      Worth pre booking the £5 fee for your lounge with PP tho. Annoying but at least you get in. Turn aways really on the up now. And there’s always Grain Store…

      • Matthew says:

        And you get fast track security so not all bad news….

    • Lady London says:

      tbh I would say not. not unless you really insist on getting into the lounge. personally I’m still trying to find a flight I can take out of the grain store terminal!

      I know it’s a busy weekend but would expect saturday to be busy – sunday will still be reasonable but not as rammed as saturday.

      Just depends on how sure you need to be that you will get through to everything you want easily. If you are travelling as a family that may make it more important.

  • Lee says:

    OT – New Morrison’s offer on my plat card till the end of this month. only 5% with min £30 spend

    • Shoestring says:

      same on my Green – got enough 5% off coupons for diesel for the rest of this year so will give it a miss 🙂

      • Polly says:

        Did that too w the xmas 10% off. Covered most petrol and supermarket and gift cards spend for months.
        Only had 5% off this time so stocked up but am waiting for 10% to appear again on just 1 of our cards…

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